SOURCE: "Left, Left, Left," in Nikolai Leskov: The Man and His Art, Harvard University Press, 1977, pp. 392-406.

In the following excerpt from a full-length study of Leskov's life and career, McLean discusses Leskov's signature story, "The Lefthander," asserting that it expresses leftist social and political leanings more typical of the author's later stories and not right-wing sympathies as many commentators have supposed. McLean also argues that Leskov's linguistic style in this story, which reviewers have faulted as overwrought and unnecessary, serves serious artistic functions.

In 1881, at the age of fifty, Leskov wrote his best-known short story, the work Russians associate with his name as we connect Tom Sawyer with Mark Twain's: "The Tale of the Crosseyed Lefthander from Tula and the Steel Flea (A Workshop Legend)," as it was originally called.¹ In the collected works (1889), the nameless hero's appellation, Levshá, "The Lefthander," was established as the main title...